What is the point of having the bonfire mechanic in Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order and Survivor?

From a design and gameplay perspective, I find it very strange that Survivor continues to use a mechanic that is under utilized in Fallen Order.

These games don't have the equipment or stat system that souls games have. When you die you don't really lose any power or progress towards anything, or at least not on the same scale.

There's definitely nothing thematic between it and story or universe.

I can imagine that back when Fallen Order was in development, they said "oh, souls games are popular, let's put this in" but they basically don't do anything with it in Survivor.

It just really sticks out to me as vestigial, and if they got rid of it nothing of value would be lost.

Haven’t touched Survivor yet, but replayed about half of the first leading up to this game and best as I can tell, it seems like they wanted a risk/reward tied to replenishing your items and they also weren’t interested in having the maps turn into huge, forever lifeless exploration zones.

That said, I don’t think God of War is hurt by players knowing they can freely explore combat zones forevermore so I’m not sure Jedi would have either. To my mind, because these are places you’ll return to several times due to its Metroid/Tomb Raider level design, they could’ve compromised and simply repopulated the planets while you’re off World but allow for exploration while you’re grounded.

Theres so much that you can only do at the meditation points that it probably would have taken either a large design change, or an incomprehensible amount of menus and submenus. Between spending skill points, assigning perks, choosing stances, and fast travel, at least its all under one menu, and I enjoy that theyre spaced out enough that finding one is still cool, even if only for a new fast travel points. I honestly rarely if ever have or do rest and the meditation points, i never have much of a problem keeping BD pretty stocked with stims

I think a large part of the disconnect with the mechanic comes from the fact that this is a game meant for a broader playerbase than a Souls games and therefore the default difficulty is pretty damn easy. It essentially removes the tension inherent to the bonfire system in only having a certain number of healing items until you reach the next one. The risk reward of choosing whether to replenish your items but respawn all the enemies is also lessened due to lack of difficulty.

That being said, I have been playing on Grandmaster difficulty and there it does indeed bring back some of that tension. Outside of legendary monsters and some boss fights it's still not that hard, but it's hard enough that the possibility of running out of stims between bonfires does at least exist, at least before I got to the point of having like 10 stims in total.